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Following the “Good News, Bad News” of Netflix’s mixed support of Android, a development APK has been leaked online. While the Netflix APK seems to install properly, few (if any) have reported any success in actually streaming video.

This is a promising sign of Netflix finally coming to Linux.

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Now that openSUSE 11.1 has been out for a couple weeks, it’s about time I share with the readers how to get around some of the growing pains of this latest release. It also seems an opportune time to update some of the guides and general information on this blog.

One of the main issues seems to stem from user permissions, particularly with KDE3 applications. So let’s fire up YaST2 and go to Security and Users–User and Group Management. Now click the edit button and add yourself to the following groups: audio, cdrom, and disk. You’ll need to log out and back in for the changes to take effect. There’s been some reports that Packman’s version of K3B doesn’t contain this bug, but these changes seem to help the rest of the KDE3 applications to automount properly.

Quite to my surprise when I went to add repositories, I found that my update repository’s autorefresh option was disabled, so check your repositories in YaST2 under Software–Software Repositories. I also disabled the Source and Debug repos.

The gstreamer backend for phonon has proven quite buggy on my system, so I removed it and instead installed phonon-backend-xine. I’d also recommend installing kdebase3 and kdebase3-SuSE to hedge up a few of the final quirks between KDE4 and KDE3 applications.

Install video drivers.

“Compiz on 11.1 hates me” as so aptly titled on openSUE’S troubleshooting guide for Compiz (Compiz certainly hated me). The solution is quite simple, however. First, remove all packages for Compiz and Emerald.Then remove all configuration files. The easiest way is to start up your favorite terminal emulator (like Konsole or Yakuake) and run the command:

This is the tag line that has already greeted many readers today as news travels further about a serious security flaw effecting every version of Internet Explorer from 5 to the latest IE 8 beta.

The exploitation of this vulnerability has already said to have compromised as many as 10,000 websites (roughly 0.02% by Microsoft’s estimation) and been used to steal game passwords, but could potentially be used to steal other more vital information.

“I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw,” said John Curran, head of Microsoft UK’s Windows group; however, many security experts are urging users to switch to an alternative browser. Some of the more popular alternatives to Internet Explorer are Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, but there are many lesser known alternatives–many of them are free of charge such as Maxthon.

Microsoft is currently working on a patch for this vulnerability, however no release date has been set. This is not to say that you need to unistall IE, nor that other browsers are impervious to vulnerabilities and security flaws. Malware exists due to bugs in the code of programs, and no code is perfect. Patches continue to roll out for every platform (yes, even Mac). While it’s the responsibility of software vendors to fix and release patches in a timely manner, it’s the responsibility of the user to install the patches offered in just as an efficient time frame as well as practice safe habits both online and offline.

Microsoft has voiced concern that Yahoo’s intended deal with Google would violate anti-trust laws. The deal would allow Yahoo to place Google advertisements on their site and collect revenue from them. The General Counselor for Microsoft cited alleged comments from Yahoo Chief Jerry Yang regarding a “bipolar” market with Yahoo and Microsoft at one end, and Google at the other.

(Yang) said ‘If we do this deal with Google, Yahoo will become part of Google’s pole and Microsoft,’ he said, ‘would not be strong enough in this market to remain a pole of its own,”‘ Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee on Tuesday.

I find this statement rather ironic since Microsoft recently attempted to acquire Yahoo. After Yahoo’s public chastening of the software mogul, Microsoft is now backing one of the main investors, Carl Icahn, to obtain a controlling share of Yahoo and clean house amongst Yahoo’s committee members.

In defense of the deal, Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond stated “Google and Yahoo will remain fierce competitors. This agreement will not remove a competitor from the field.”

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Hi folks! I know it’s been a while since I actually posted anything new instead of just updating links and information. Rest assured, there’s a few new articles in the cue. 😉 In the meantime, I’ve stumbled across an interesting read from Tom’s Hardware: an in depth review of Intel’s new Atom processor.

The Atom line comes in close quarters with Asus’ upcoming revised EeePC 901 and 1000. A hearty thanks goes to the good folks at Distrowatch for reporting on Linux ultra-portables at Computex. Check out their story and see why you may not be happy about the direction Asus is taking the EeePC.

The other intriguing tidbit from the same story is Acer’s break with Microsoft and the introduction of the Aspire one. More information can be found at UMPCportal. The Aspire one is part of the avalanche of low cost ultra-portable laptops soon to be available–all competing for your oh, so precious dollar. With such stiff competition around the corner, prices are sure to drop to an even more competitive level in a few month’s time. Just in time for back to school sales late Summer to mid Fall.

While doing some research online, I came across this bit of information from Neowin: Microsoft will make Sp3 for XP available for download by the general public April 29th. Sp3 won’t hit automatic updates until June 10th, however. More information from Neowin available here.

What’s the big deal about another service pack for an already aged operating system? How does as much as a 10% performance boost sound? One author even suggested that users should upgrade from Vista to XP Sp3. While last month’s Sp1 for Vista provided countless bug fixes, benchmarks have shown that overall performance is actually slower than pre-Sp1. The real-world user experience sometimes is far different from synthetic benchmarks.

Oh, and a word of warning for those of you who would be tempted to try the Release Candidate 2 Refresh…Out of impatience, I tried installing this on my system, and after several failed attempts and a good deal of voodoo (aided by searching Google), I finally was able to.

I wanted to announce openSUSE’s release of 10.3 and all the many new changes and improvements; however, the release was almost three weeks ago, and as time has worn on, I’ve felt more and more obligated to do a full fledged review and not just an announcement. Crunched for time and inspiration, I have managed to dig up a rather interesting find in the world of motherboards. The official announcement can be found on openSUSE News.

Asus is releasing a brand new motherboard based on Intel’s latest X38 chipset that includes an embedded Linux system with Skype, a stripped-down version of Firefox, and even on board wireless N. This development is exciting because it offers basic every day use of the computer essentially without turning it on! Even though the P5E Deluxe is a high end desktop motherboard, there’s definitely an unspoken possibility to include this feature in Laptops to come.